Mutation (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 4) (24 page)

"Don't even think about it," Shirley rumbled, and tossed a heavy mace at Nick. Nick caught the ancient weapon and stared at it dumbly.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" He stammered.

Shirley grinned widely under his heavy moustache.

"
Fight
," he said with relish, and pushed Nick toward the steps that led to the battlements.

When Nick
reached the top and saw what waited beyond the wall, he felt like his heart might drop from his open mouth.

Thousands upon thousands of the Infected were flocking toward the castle, smashing into the wall below, crushing their brethren against the unforgiving stone.
There seemed to be no end to them. Everywhere he looked, the winding streets of Caernarfon were filled by a torrent of the creatures, a wave of death rushing toward him with single-minded purpose.

The urge to vomit was suddenly overwhelming.

I'm standing in a castle under siege,
he thought.
Holding a mace.

The notion made him feel a little like laughing and he might have, but for the fear that he might never be able to stop.

He stared at Ray, standing a few yards to his right. The man was aiming the crossbow, but reluctant to fire. Only when he saw one of the Infected trying to scramble up the stone wall, and making it a few feet off the ground did he unleash a bolt into the thing's forehead.

"Spread out, Nick," Ray yelled. "When they get up to the top, knock '
em back down."

Nick stared at him.

When?

He stared down again, and saw that as the Infected at the front of the crowd were slowly crushed to death, the ones behind began to climb over the corpses. The tide was rising.

Oh fuck,
Nick thought, and then a petrol bomb flew across the wall to his left, landing on the Infected crowd and sending a pool of liquid fire across it. And then another.

And then John was at his side, flaming bottles in each hand, raining fire down on the seething mass of horror below.

More bottles arced over Nick's head, and he turned to see Michael and Rachel below, filling bottles with rags and generator fuel and passing them out to people. Michael was roaring at the terrified girls and the stunned bikers to get to the top of the battlements and defend themselves.

It
all felt like a dream, a strange, surreal vision that couldn't possibly be connected to reality. Until Nick saw a bloody hand reaching over the lip of the battlements and an eyeless face appearing in front of him.

And then Nick swung the mace with all his might and felt the crunch and snap of bone as the terrible weapon connected, and he knew that it was all real, every last terrifying bit, and Shirley had been right. There was only one thing left to do. The thing he had avoided doing his whole life.

Fight.

*

For a while there, John had thought it might actually work. But the Infected did not respond to fire in the way any other creature would. They didn't shrink back in fear from the wall of flame the petrol bombs had created. They simply charged into it, hurtling to their deaths, oblivious to everything except the prey they had been kept from for so long.

And worse: the burnt, smouldering bodies of what John thought of as the
first wave
simply provided a ramp for the others to climb. Already some were reaching the top of the battlements, only to be knocked back by one of the people defending the place with ancient swords and clubs.

It was only a matter of time before one of the Infected got across and broke their defen
ces, and then the game would be up. One was all it would take to kill them all. John jabbed his knife through an eyeless face, sending it plummeting back onto the carpet of bodies below and stared about him blearily, wondering which of the people now fighting at his side would be the one to sink their teeth into his flesh when the time came.

When the Infected broke all resistance, when the onslaught finally breached the castle, would it be one of the bikers that ripped their eyes out before pouncing on John? Would it be Michael?
Rachel
?

Will I have to kill her myself?

Will I even know I'm doing it?

He saw the biggest of the bikers swinging a huge old sword into the neck of one of the creatures as it hauled itself over the wall; saw the blunt blade lodge deep in the
creature's flesh and get torn away from the man's grasp as the thing fell away.

We have to retreat.

"We can't hold it," John roared, trusting that someone - anyone - was listening. "Get back to the main tower. Fall back."

He saw the one dressed as a soldier streak past him first, followed quickly by the bikers and the handful of Darren's group that had made it up to the battlements. Below him he heard the pounding of feet as the rest of them turned and headed for the tower. He couldn't be sure if they had heard his cry, or had merely seen the thing that he had missed.

There just hadn't been enough of them to hold the entire length of the wall. John should have realised it sooner. They never stood a chance of defending the castle. It was too large. The confirmation of the fact was right there.

Streaking along the battlements toward him
, snarling.

Infected.

He saw three, and for a brief, dreadful moment he prayed that they would continue running
along
the wall, straight at him. If they leapt down, the game was up.

Even as he thought it he saw it happening, as one of them veered to its right, utterly oblivious to the drop
, throwing itself down at the group of people retreating toward the tower. He heard the savage crack as the thing's legs met the floor, and had time to see Rachel sprinting toward it, brandishing a blade, and then he was rolling backwards, frantically evading the deadly lunge as the first of the two Infected still on the battlements reached him at full tilt.

As he rolled, he swivelled his hips, employing a leg sweep that had always worked on humans. It was a move born of desperation. Bringing the teeth down towards him as he rose.

The thing snapped like an animal; caught his jacket as it fell.

Missed his flesh.
Just.

John stabbed down with his knife.
Hard.
He threw every ounce of strength gained during a life spent in battle into the thrust, and didn't even hear his own roar of triumph as the blade cleaved itself a new home in the thing's brainstem.

His hand was already moving
, grasping for his second knife.

And finding the sheath empty.

His knife was buried in the back of one of Darren's men.

Kind of funny
, John thought. He couldn't even remember the kid's name.

The third of the Infected was throwing itself toward him, and time seemed to slow for John, and he realised the old
cliché about your whole life flashing before your eyes wasn't true at all. It was just this one scene. This one hideous image, slowed down to a sickening crawl and intensified until it made his eyes hurt. It felt unbearably long.

Gamble
, John thought, and threw himself backwards off the wall.

*

Nick was the first to reach the top of the tower. Most of them were still on the ground floor, wailing and waiting for someone to tell them what to do. None of them seemed to realise that you didn't stop running until there was nowhere left to run.

Nick wasn't going to wait. He knew
exactly
what to do. What he did best.

He sprinted for the chopper.

He would get the engine running. He would give them thirty seconds. Whoever made it to the top of the tower, he would save.

Thirty seconds.

He stabbed the controls and sighed in relief as he felt the steady vibration of the engine roaring into life.

Nick was going to live.

He stared at the mass of Infected that seemed to stretch out endlessly below him, and glanced at his wristwatch.

Thirty seconds.

*

John
tried to roll as he fell, tucking in his arms and legs, but he hit the ground
hard.
Breath exploded from his body and for a moment his vision flickered and blurred, like there was a bad connection in his brain somewhere. He saw the Infected creature land beside him, smashing into the floor knees-first, driving its legs up behind its head and snapping its spine in two. The thing's hipbone drove itself all the way from flesh out into the open air, and for a moment John dared to hope the fall had killed it.

And maybe it had. But not instantly.

The creature whipped its broken body over and threw an arm forward, dragging itself toward John even as its life steadily drained out onto the ground around it.

John stared at it in horror and tried to drag himself to his feet; knew his stunned muscles were not working quickly enough.

This is it,
he thought, and shut his eyes.

And opened them again when t
he rifle roared, and the top half of the creature's skull detonated.

John sucked in a deep breath, and jumped as he saw a shadow fall over him, and a hand extended
in front of his face.

He grabbed
Michael's hand and hauled himself up, almost screaming as pain lanced through his legs; grateful that he could still
feel
them.

"Go," Michael said, and John realised they were the last two in the courtyard. He staggered toward the tower and heard the rifle roar again; didn't need to look to know the Infected were pouring over the wall now, flooding
into the castle. The rifle roared a third time and then clicked, and John heard the whirring of Michael's wheelchair, moving behind him at pace, and knew he had run out of ammunition.

They entered the tower almost simultaneously to a chorus of terrified scream
s and Michael slammed the door even as the first blows began to rain down upon it. He engaged the deadbolt and drew back, gasping for air as the door began to shake under the impact of frantic, thunderous blows.

The door would hold for a while. It was thick wood locked by a heavy iron bar. Better yet, it was narrow. There was only so much force the mass of Infected could exert on it.
But he didn't think it would hold indefinitely. There was only one way left to go.

He pointed at the stairs, and the people crammed into the tower began to run toward them
.

John dragged legs
that felt like they were burning in acid to the base of the stairs and began to climb, praying that the door would hold long enough for the chopper to ferry everyone away from the castle before it was completely overrun. He hadn't seen the pilot anywhere, but if it came to it, John would figure out how to fly the damn thing himself.

Every step was a fresh bout of torture that felt like it would snap
his shins in two, but he gritted his teeth and forged ahead, picking up as much pace as possible until finally he reached the door that led to the roof and burst through it and roared in impotent fury.

The chopper was gone.

Well done Nick-yyyy, got away clean again.

Nick grimaced as the chopper continued to lift into the air, and the castle below receded to little more than a grey dot. With the
dark stain of the Infected swarming around it, it looked like the nucleus of a rotten cell.

Got away clean
, he thought, repeating the words his father's voice had just croaked in his mind.
So why am I crying?

It was not just the tears running down Nick's cheeks either; he
could not stop the great, heaving sobs that rattled his chest and throat painfully.

Because you're a cry
-baby coward, Nick-yyyy.

Nick squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn't getting away clean. He was getting away stained by the lives of
at least thirty innocent people. Stained by the lives of Ray and Shirley; good guys who had helped him, and who he had left to die.

The chopper began to lurch dangerously as the tears blurred his vision.

"What was I supposed to do?" He sobbed.

What you always do Nick-
yyyy. You don't stop running until there's nowhere left to run.

Nick blinked as realisation hit him.

There
is
nowhere left to run
, he thought.
You keep running, or you stop and fight. Where is there to run to, that won't be exactly the same as this? Or worse?

He thought of the monster that had attacked Catterick. If he hadn't been safe there, walled in and surrounded by the army, then nowhere was safe.
There was no point in running, not any more.